I wonder if Sweet (American) Dreams is the title of the single and the album is called The American Dream (Is Killing Me) or sumthin
While we wait for whatever comes next, thought I'd share this anecdote. One of my close friends was a big Offspring fan growing up and he still, to this day, insists that in their first decade they rivaled Green Day in terms of studio output. Initially I laughed but I realized it was kinda close for the first 6 albums: 1039 Smoothed Out/Slappy Hours > The Offpsring s/t Ignition > Kerplunk Dookie > Smash Ixnay On The Hombre > Insomniac Americana > Nimrod (REALLY close, could possibly flip depending on my mood) Warning > Conspiracy Of One (could also flip depending on my mood) What say you Chorus.FM audience?
I've been on a bit of an Offspring bender recently but Americana and Conspiracy are too heavy on the cheese, although both have some bangers, that GD win out for me.
Yeah I like the Offspring as much as the next person but Green Day is the first band I ever loved and I prefer their albums.
My gut was to say that Green Day were more commercially successful but after looking at the numbers, idk they had a sort of similar track record didn't they. Dookie was objectively bigger than Smash, but Smash was also massive. Ixnay and Insomniac were kind of similar more aggressive follow ups. Americana and Nimrod both had massive crossover hits (Pretty fly for a white guy and good riddance...but Americana seems to have been a much bigger hit) and then Warning and Consipracy similar in terms of sales. I guess I don't give the Offspring enough credit for how popular they were in the 90s too.
As someone who came of age in that 93-01 period (GOD I'm old), I can confirm that Americana and Conspiracy Of One were both bigger holistic events than Nimrod or Warning.
I used to think that as well but after relistening to Americana, the cheesy songs do a good job of breaking up the faster skate-punk stuff and creating a more dynamic album overall. Plus, Americana has "Pay The Man" which is like a prog song, beating Green Day by 6 years.
Hey what thread was I making this same argument about Offspring's size and being forgotten in the pantheon of giant bands not that long ago ... lol.
The Offspring oddly has been forgotten about in terms of the broader "punk going mainstream" discussion, probably because they haven't been able to remain as culturally relevant as Green Day or Blink 182 in the past two decades.
To be fair to that thread, The Offspring hasn't always (or ever?) been defined as pop-punk as they came up more with the Bad Religion, NOFX, Pennywise, Social D crew.